


The Apprenticeship of Rhaga Venn

by The_Librarian



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Apprenticeship, Gen, Hunting the Dark Side, Jedi Code, Jedi Training, Light Side vs Dark Side, Living with the Force, Shadows - Freeform, Sith, The Force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-04-01 01:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4001272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Librarian/pseuds/The_Librarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three hundred years after their return, the Jedi are scattered by choice to avoid the mistakes of the past: a dozen different sects, all working to protect the people of the galaxy. On a tiny farm, on a distant world, a young boy awakens to the Force under tragic circumstances. This is his story.</p><p>And the story of what it means to be a Jedi Knight.</p><p>OCs in the post-Legacy Era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose I shouldn't enjoy Star Wars as much as I do. Between the toxic xenophobia and sexism that stems from the worst aspects of space opera to the overly simplistic black and white storytelling, I should probably loathe it. And yet, it's a huge part of my mental landscape. The aesthetics of it, the idea of a galaxy teaming with life, where everyone understands seven languages as a matter of course and robots and hyperspace are just part of everyday life - it's fun. And so I keep coming back to it, be it in CGI, Lego or writing . . .
> 
> This is one of the ideas I keep coming back to. See, while it is very easy to moan about how the Jedi 'philosophy' makes no coherent sense (because as presented, it doesn't), it is actually quite interesting to think about how it *could* work, given the implication that Jedi are connected to every other living being in the galaxy. Well, this is my attempt to explore that. For ease of continuity, it's set several hundred years after the first trilogy and features an entirely original cast.
> 
> I hope that, as a meandering piece of speculation, it will hold your attention. Enjoy!

 

When he was eleven years old, Rhaga Venn killed a man.

He did not mean to. It was done in ignorance, without understanding the action or the consequences. At the time, all that mattered was the man, red-faced with fury, screaming and shouting at his mothers, the mob at his back, growing louder and angrier, the noise of it, the pain it caused his family, burning like wild-fire in his head.

The man lurched forward, arm raised. Rhaga's mothers stood firm, defiant, angry, horrifyingly small. The man shouted and struck out and stars exploded in Rhaga's mind. His fingernails dug into his palms as he squeezed his fists tighter and tighter. Hurt and humiliation rolled over him in waves. He was incandescent with them. His nerves sang, his blood pounded against his skull.

They told him what he did later. How he screamed and the man leading the mob had been flung into the air, so high that there was no chance of him surviving the landing.

All he could remember was that instant of searing fury, the single burning desire to strike back filling every atom of his being, drowning out the world.

 

* * *

 

By the time the Jedi came, he had already run away

The enormity of his crime drove him into the wilderness, far from the farms and the villages. He was desperately hungry, shivering with fear and utterly convinced that he deserved to perish. Nightmare stories about the Sith and the monstrous Dark Side swarmed and shrieked in his head. He almost wanted a mighty warrior to spring from the stars and strike him down. Only fear for his wretched soul drove him to hide himself.

He felt her coming long before she yanked him from the undergrowth and that made it all the worse. Some stories made you think the Jedi must have wonderful thoughts, bright like stars. Her thoughts were not like that. There was something awful and cold about them, like a mirror in the morning. If she were a light, it was a stark one from which there was no hiding.

She had come there seeking a murderer. She made no effort to hide that intent or to conceal the penalty for using the Force to kill. He looked up into her grim, weathered face, crowned with horns and dark, straggly hair, and knew he would be shown no mercy. Running would have been foolish so he did not run. Begging would have been pointless so he did not beg. Instead he stood there and waited, swallowing his misery until it choked him.

He did not close his eyes when she ignited her lightsaber, and the golden blade filled the world. Absurdly, there was no heat. It should have been hot, he thought. Beautiful as it was, like the heart of a fire, it should have been hot. Yet it gave off no more heat than a distant candle.

For an age, he stared into it, wondering, distractedly, whether he would feel the blow. Somehow, that he was about to die did not actually matter.

The blade went out so suddenly it left him reeling, the thunder of its absence making him rock back and nearly fall. The Jedi's hand landed on his shoulder, a quick touch to balance him again. He looked up but she was not looking at him. She was shrugging off her dark coat to wrap around him, guiding his hands to hold it tight.

She stepped away across the clearing. “Follow,” she instructed, curt, as if the word took more time than she could afford. “Follow.”

And he did.

 

* * *

 

She took him to a planet that had no name for the simple reason that no one had ever bothered to give it one.

There was a vast mountain range on one of its continents. They arrived on a clear day and it stood out as a great white scar across an immense grey and green tundra. The Jedi guided her ship to land in the shadow of one of the larger peaks. When they stepped out, the air was cool and fresh, a sharp contrast to the dust and ozone that permeated the little transport. Rhaga filled his lungs, savouring the taste and the way it chilled him through the heavy clothes she had given him.

The Jedi had not spoken to him once during the flight and she did not do so now, just heaved a bulky rucksack on to her shoulder and set off. She obviously expected him to follow. Or did not care whether he did or not.

They climbed along a trail that was barely there, hacking through tangled bushes and fording icy streams. An hour passed, then two, the day sinking into dusk. As sunset ignited the horizon, they crested a rise and he saw a wooden building nestling in a rocky hollow surrounded by clumps of ragged trees. Another structure, little more than a hut, sat some way further up the slope. She led the way to the door and gestured over the locks. The door opened and she went in, again without saying anything to him. Again, he followed. The room was dark and bare save for a single worn table and a heap of mats. The Jedi laid her bag on the floor and flipped it open, taking out a lantern and a bulky cylinder that he thought must be a stove.

He closed the door as she lit the lantern, then hovered near the threshold, not certain what he should be doing. She unpacked more equipment – a cooking pot, several smaller bags, bowls. As he watched dumbly, she began preparing a meal, unhurriedly and with the deftness of one used to doing so alone.

Only once the stew was simmering did she finally turn to him, expressionless and remote in the half-gloom. For a long while, they looked at one another. He wondered what she saw and was afraid to know.

“You will sleep in here.” The words were as curt and grudging as before. “I, through there.” She waved to an inner door barely differentiated from the wall. “You will rise when I decide and sleep when I tell you. You will cook. You will exercise. You will train. You will obey instructions when given and ask questions when you do not understand. Do you understand this?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice. Her eyes narrowed but she nodded as well and gestured for him to draw some of the mats over so they could sit and eat.

Later, curled up on the floor in that empty outer room, he wept into his blanket. The idea of never seeing his family again had numbed him. The reality of it tore him apart. He wanted to run home and knew that was impossible. He wanted to be forgiven and knew he could not be. But at some point, deep into the night, his tears ran out and in the silence he half-felt the Jedi's mirror-bright thoughts dancing around his dreams.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The training was harsh and gruelling and the Jedi gave him no quarter. She roused him long before dawn and did not let him sleep until the daylight was a distant memory. His life deformed around exercises and study. Long hikes across the stony landscape were followed by long sessions with ancient books retrieved from hidden compartments in the cabin's floor. She imposed order on his mind and showed him how to impose order on his body. He became strong and swift and alert. And he began to comprehend the Force.

She taught him to quiet his mind and to feel beyond the fringes of his own consciousness. He learnt to listen to the world and hear the song of every creature, every plant and every stone, to hear the chime of the stars and the thunder of atomic forces, gravity's waves breaking on a thousand, billion shores and the stirring of grass in the depths of a windless night. It was so vast and so all pervading that at first it overwhelmed him. It awed and terrified him in equal measure. But she guided him through the fear and and showed him to temper his awe with understanding. The Force flowed from life and the cosmos was swept along in its currents, but in the tiniest stone lay the power to divert those currents, to change the direction of that flow. Great events hinged on pebbles and motes of dust. A butterfly held as much power as a supernova.

Everything mattered. And nothing mattered. The paradox at the heart of Jedi teachings.

“Emotion, yet peace,” she recited to him as they faced each other, cross-legged atop a hill of bare earth and scrubby grass, “Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.”

“All is equal,” he replied, brow furrowed with concentration as his thoughts held a bead of dew in the air between them, “All is . . . unequal. Everything is the same . . . yet different. And everything deserves protecting.”

She did not say anything and he half suspected he had said something stupid. But if so, she did not reprove him and the lesson continued until heavy raindrops began to splutter down around them.

 

* * *

 

A year into the training, she taught him to hunt. She showed him how to trace movements across the skin of the world and follow them to their cause. How to approach prey unseen and how to bring it down.

How to end life cleanly and without malice.

On the farm, death had been something that happened as a necessary part of rearing animals. No one dwelt on it, except when it came before its time. You accepted it, even if you did not like it. He had accepted it.

This was different. Feeling the big land bird's fluttering mind snap out sent a hollow shock through his body, the horrible silence all the worse because _he_ had caused it.

“Life feeds on life,” the Jedi murmured, kneeling beside him as he hunched, shaken, over the carcass, “This is a fact. Take no joy in it but do not turn away from it. The death of another may mean your survival or the survival of millions. It may bring peace and an end to suffering. We face this. We recognise it. We accept it.”

She helped him – guided him – in gathering up the bird, in skinning it, cleaning it and in taking its meat. There were parts you could not eat, uses to which the offal and bones could be put. Nothing was wasted – nothing must be wasted. Death must have meaning if it came by your hand. He knew that was the real lesson. Not the mechanics of it but the way in which it was done, the understanding of what it meant to kill.

The shadows of blinding rage and of the man whose life he had ended weighed heavy on him that night.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time he was thirteen, the Jedi judged him ready to learn how to fight.

In truth, she had been preparing him for it for months. The training was heightening his reflexes and tightening his muscles, making him sure of his footing and aware of his surroundings. The hunts became faster, more complex, the aims harder than merely bringing the prey down. In time they began to hunt each other, a game that he had no hope of winning but that he pursued doggedly all the same.

The day he managed to snag at her sleeve, she demonstrated the basics of unarmed combat.

From then on, hunting and meditation were interspersed with sparring matches that left him beaten, bruised and determined. There were no named forms, no set sequences of blows and reposts – just attack and defence, ways of striking and ways of blocking strikes. He was expected to learn from experience, to know why he succeeded or failed, and, above all, to think while he fought.

As with the hunting, she wove the Force into the combat subtly. At first, it seemed as though she were simply drilling the reflexes into him. Gradually though, he realised she was showing him how to feel his way through combat, to predict, to respond before the punch was thrown, to follow the motion of the fight in such a way that he could control his place in it.

Not that it did him much good. Nine times out of ten, the sparring ended with him flat on his back or doubled over, the wind knocked clean out of him. The Jedi's victories were matter of fact. She displayed no frustration at his failure, just waited for him to get up and try again, or demonstrated new alternatives. She never changed pace, never hurried him on to something different or slowed down to let him catch up.

Should he have resented her relentlessness? Should he have found it harsh or overbearing and chaffed under her tutelage? The emotions were there. They hovered around his thoughts, creeping in when he was tired or frustrated with his shortcomings. Yet he was unwilling to let them blossom into tangible reaction. The forbidding calmness with which the Jedi treated him made becoming angry with her seem foolish and no burst of passion when fighting ever gave him an advantage; quite the reverse, the instant he let his mind and body become undisciplined in any way, she would effortlessly flatten him.

Patience and perseverance and the subtle guidance of the Force. That was how she fought and that was the only way he was ever going to be able to match her.

 

* * *

 

In the history of the Jedi and their teaching he found as much to discourage as inspire. The books and recordings spoke of a ceaseless cycle of decay, upheaval and rebirth – that this repeated across thousands of years made it all the worse. With all that time to look back and see what had come before, how could the Old Order have so completely failed to learn from its past mistakes?

She fixed him with a long stare when he asked the question aloud, until he shifted uncomfortably and began to think it was a foolish thing to say. But no, she folded her hands in her lap and nodded slowly, her expression growing more solemn than usual as she weighed her next words carefully.

“Success persists in the memory of many when failure has been forgotten. This is true of Jedi as of any other culture.”

He frowned, digesting the idea. “Didn't they ever see it coming? They knew so much and could do so much – didn't they feel it in the Force?”

“Sensing something is not the same as believing it.”

“They didn't want to think they could fall again?”

“Would you?”

No, he had to admit. It was a hard thing to face. But surely facing it, doing something about it – that was better than ignoring it?

A trace of sadness, the ghost of a wan smile crossed her face. “We do not always react to fear as would be best.”

“Isn't that what Jedi are supposed to do?”

“Yes. And yet we can fail all the same.” The sadness lifted and the stern serenity rose back into place. “Never forget that.”

He looked up at her and what he saw there chilled him to his bones.

 

* * *

 

For his fourteenth birthday, she taught him to play Sabacc.

Why his teacher had a battered protocol droid with an advanced dealing skills package stowed aboard her ship, he had no idea. But there it was when he came back from the morning run, shuffling about in the cabin and fussing over the table.

The mats had been set up so that Rhaga and the Jedi could face one another. She indicated that he sit and the droid began to shuffle the cards, dealing them out with deft flicks of its hands. At first the interplay of luck and calculated deception felt strange and unwieldy after so long discipling himself. The more they played, though, the more he began to appreciate the rhythm and skill of it. To trust to fluke and the inability of the other player to hide their emotions was a far cry from letting the Force guide his actions and yet it was not entirely different. Ultimately, it was still about understanding other people and the situation they were caught up in.

He had a feeling his teacher never once lost control of the game. She put on a whole range of tells and twitches for his benefit, both obvious and subtle, rotating them and using them to manoeuvre him about. Her actual emotions were completely locked down and it was unlikely he would have been able to detect them even if he had been trying. Still, he thought he surprised her once or twice so maybe there was hope that he might someday be able to keep up with her.

He did wonder, as they ended the final hand and the droid began to pack up the cards, whether the whole thing had just been meant as another exercise. There was no reason after all that she would have known that it was his birthday and even less to presume that she would have done anything to mark it. Under the cover of moving the mats back to their correct heaps he glanced over, half thinking he might catch sight of some unguarded tell, some genuine give-away about what she had really intended.

Of course, there was nothing.

 


	4. Chapter 4

When he was fifteen, the Jedi took him to the top of one of the highest, barest mountains in the range and left him there with a single instruction: “Survive.”

As Rhaga watched her disappear down the near-invisible path, he had to swallow a surge of fear and vertigo. For the first time since they had arrived on the planet, he was alone. There would be no running back to the cabin and no stoic helping hand this time. He looked around at the bare rocks and the few tenacious weeds poking through the snow, dazed that she thought him remotely ready for that kind of test.

But if she did, then he would endure it. That brought his snowballing fear under control and as he had been taught, he pulled it deep into himself, accepting that it was there and moving on. He reached out to the Force, feeling his way across the mountaintop and down the slopes, probing the contours of the earth and snow, listening to the stirring of the plants that made it their home.

'Survive', she said and so survive he would. He could not stay where he was: even if he could get his tent pitched there, the peak was too exposed to risk a night there. Since he could hardly go back the way they had come, he scouted a path in the opposite direction, down into the mountain's lee.

There were mosses there from which he took carefully judged sections for food and kindling and he filled his second canteen with snow to give him something to clean with or boil for drinking water. A scattering of roots dug with effort from the frozen soil completed the haul and as the sun set, he pitched camp on a broad ledge that curved into the mountainside. He found no fire wood so he risked using the portable heater, keeping a close eye on the power level and turning it off as soon as he could afford to.

In the depths of the night, wrapped tightly in his sleeping bag, he quietened his mind and opened his consciousness to the Force once more. This time, he did not try to focus on the immediate landscape, allowing himself instead to be drawn out into the wider eddies and undercurrents of the planet. The mountains rolled beneath him, their roots resounding with slumbering geological songs. Caves and underground rivers rang hollowly with the lilting chimes of flowing water and all that lived within. Plants, sluggish in the dark and the cold, curled into themselves, hoarding their life in their sap. Somewhere, a predator stalked its prey, a silver sharp mind in pursuit of a fluttering heart.

He saw every facet of the world and the unified whole. He saw the colours and the emptiness, as it was and as it had been, as it would be and as it might be. And he saw nothing but the insides of his eyelids, black on black in the dark.

Survive. A single, simple instruction. But survival was not an end in itself, even as a test of ability. There was a path to be taken through the mountains: a path that he was going to take; a path that it would be right for him to take. Those might not be the same thing and there were so many other paths that it would be easy to stumble from one to the other, but if he let the Force guide him, if he let it draw him along as he might let it guide his hand . . .

And then he knew. Not in any way he could describe with maps or distances and with nothing so certain as a destination in his mind. He simply knew and when the dawn came, he started walking.

 

* * *

 

He walked for twelve days, working his way steadily through the mountain range. On the twelfth day a storm blew up, whipping the snow into a fury and driving him into clefts and hollows to escape its teeth. He pressed on as best he could, half-feeling, half sensing his way up another rise, the ground beneath his feet and the Force around him feeling equally uneven. In the distance, over the wind's howls, he thought he heard something cry out but the blizzard made it impossible to be sure.

For an hour, maybe two, he fought his way across the mountain, not entirely sure any more whether he was climbing or descending. The cold began to numb him, eating through to his bones. It became hard to centre himself, harder still to concentrate on the path ahead. With an effort of will, he tried to steady his mind and catch hold of a pattern to the storm. It danced and flurried out of his reach and lashed him with fresh daggers, cutting at his eyes so that he had to press himself to the rock-face to keep from falling.

The rock-face that suddenly was not there any more.

His sense of danger kicked in a fraction of a second before his fingers vanished into empty space. It was just enough to stop him breaking his neck. He crashed down hard among loose stones, the abrupt shelter from the wind almost as shocking as the pain of the impact. The storm's shrieking followed him in, echoing ravenously through the cave mouth.

Gathering his strength and doing his best to drive the sound and the cold from his senses, he got up and lit his lamp. The cave did not look all that big at first. It was only when he reached the rear wall that he saw the narrow channel that cut deeper into the mountainside and twisted out of sight.

He let the pack drop, scarcely feeling the weight leave him. Pulling back his hood and fixing the lamp to his coat, he slipped sideways into the passage and started edging through it, knowing with complete and utter certainty that whatever he was seeking lay beyond.

The rock quickly closed in on him. Halfway through, he was almost certain he would become trapped. In a flash of horror, he imagined being pinned between the sides of the crevice for the rest of his life. Then the moment passed and he shuffled free with a grimace.

Only to find that around the bend, the channel widened and almost immediately came to an end.

He stared stupidly at the wall before him. Had he expected something more? Some astonishing space or terrifying pit to justify childish ideas of the wondrous adventures? Perhaps so. And here he was faced with rough, unremarkable rock. It was funny, really. To come so far to end up with nothing to show for the journey save exhaustion and hunger and a dead-end.

His laughter faded before it had properly begun. Because it was not just unremarkable rock: a dozen tiny crystals sparkled in the lamp light as he leant closer. No, not a dozen. Hundreds. And not so tiny either. They seemed to be expanding, until it dawned on him that the whole wall was a single formation and the glinting was not the reflection of his lamp at all.

He reached out and felt the heat of the crystals' luminescence burn his wind-chilled skin. Shapes swam in the light, fragmented and faceted, things he thought he should know, distorted out of all recognition . . .

Then, all at once, he was looking at himself on the day the Jedi had found him, pale and brittle and transfixed by the yellow blade thrumming a hand-span from his face. Had he really been so scared? All he could remember was a terrible, hopeless calm. Resignation, he supposed . . .

In the vision, the lightsaber twitched – and the Jedi drove it through his heart.

He jerked back in shock. The image broke apart, only to reform inside another part of the formation, his younger self again, lost in the wilderness. Except this time there was no Jedi to hunt him down and he saw himself swallowed up in misery and guilt. The light twisted and he was a grown man, gaunt and sallow with eyes full of lightning.

This time, he cried out and wrenched his gaze away. Another crystal pulled him in and he was back on the day he had killed to protect his mothers, the hooting of the mob ringing in his ears. He flung up his arms, lashing out with all his anger – but this time nothing happened and the man's fists fell again and again –

And in another crystal, there was no mob and it was just another day on the farm. Another, and the mob was back but at the sight of their ringleader striking Rhaga's mothers, they turned on him and it was triumph, not helplessness that swelled in Rhaga's chest. He saw himself grown strong and tanned, a farmer tilling his fields and baking in the sun.

On and on it went, one crystal after another drawing him into their hearts and showing him himself as he could have been or might yet be. Sometimes he was a champion, smiting darkness with a sword of sunlight. Sometimes he was the darkness, something hungry and empty and always scrabbling for more. Sometimes he was one of those caught between the two, struggling for a life free of extremes.

How long he was consumed by the possibilities, he was never quite sure. When he came back to himself, it was on his knees and from the pain when he tried to move, he must have been like that for hours. The crystals still sparkled and snatched at his attention and he had to fling his hands across his eyes so that he did not fall back into the trap.

No, he thought, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He would not be dazzled by might-haves and could-bes. Nothing he had done could be taken back and nothing that had happened could be undone. He accepted that. He had to. And whatever happened next, whatever he became, that was his decision. His past defined him but _how_ it defined him was still up to him. He could choose any one of those futures but if he lived in fear of the ones he did not like, he might as well seal himself up inside the cave and never trouble the universe ever again.

Slowly, he lowered his hands. Only a single crystal still glowed, dead-centre in the formation and when he looked into it, all he saw was himself as he was.

The boy who had killed in anger and fear. The boy who had chosen never to do so again.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The crystal came away easily in his hand. He held it for a while, letting it shiver with his thoughts and lift the weight of his exhaustion. Pain ran from his limbs like falling water, though he knew it would take more than meditation to prepare him from the trek back.

Pressing the crystal into his tunic pocket, he slid into the crevice and worked his way back out into the cave proper, feeling none of the anxiety he had getting in. However long he had been entranced, it had not been long enough for the storm to die down. The wind and snow still danced outside, their frenzy cloaking everything within a few metres of the entrance. He tugged his scarf up to cover his face a little better. The cave sheltered him but offered no warmth: he would need to wrap all his blankets around him and probably use his tent –

He had just enough time to drop his hand to the knife at his belt before something huge barrelled out of the storm and bore him to the ground. Dimly, he recognised it as one of the feline predators that prowled the lower mountain slopes and wondered how it had come so far above its usual hunting grounds. But then the cat's teeth snapped together millimetres from his face and there was no time to think of anything but survival.

With most of his body trapped, he jammed the heel of his right hand into the beast's throat, driving its head back and up. It let out a frenzied howl and raked at him with its claws, tearing a gash across his chest. He gritted his teeth and pressed harder, until the cat was forced to shift, freeing his legs and letting him kick out.

In the precious seconds of freedom that gained him, he tried to fling himself to the far side of the cave – but the cat's hind legs tangled with his feet and he did not make it half way. Agonising fireworks went off in his shoulders as the claws slashed him again. His grasping fingers found the strap of his rucksack though and, taking a firm hold, he swung it with all his strength. The heavy pack slammed into the cat's flank and it skidded away with a yowl of pain.

Rhaga scrambled to his feet, ignoring his scratches as best he could. The cat leered and hissed at him from the other side of the cave. He met its eyes as steadily as he could, reaching out to it with the Force. If he could just persuade it to leave –

He was utterly unprepared for the wall of animal desperation inside the cat's head. It was in agony, starving and frantic with pain all at once. That was all the detail he could make out. The sheer intensity of it was enough to tell him something was serious wrong with the animal but it had no conception of why its body was betraying it. All it knew was that it needed to feed and that it had found prey, prey that it had wounded, prey that it could rip open and feast upon –

It sprang at him and he swung the pack again, catching the cat across its face. They cried out in unison, minds still intertwined, and the rucksack was torn from Rhaga's hands, the cat savaging it and flinging it away.

He darted around towards the cave entrance, slipping his knife from its sheath. Every instinct was screaming at him to get away, but with the storm at his back and his equipment lying in pieces, there was no way he could run and survive. He stared into the cat's eyes again and knew that it would not back down. Even if he had the understanding of the Force needed to compel another being's actions, it was so frantic he doubted he would be able to affect it.

The memory of a man lying twisted in the dust rose up unbidden. The power he had used then lay within him still. Tap into it again and he could kill the cat instantly. The temptation was there and as the animal growled and hunched ready to spring, he felt it keenly.

His fingers tightened around the knife and he listened, really _listened_ to the Force. He heard the cat's sinews tightening, the pounding of its heartbeat and his own, the blood pulsing from their wounds, inside and out, the storm that trapped them both. The past swirled away in the wind and the future hovered just within reach, tasting of death.

The cat bared its fangs and flew at his throat. In that instant, he knew the future, knew that one day he would look into his fate and it would be his death that looked back at him. But this was not that day.

And in one movement, he dropped and drove his knife into the cat's heart.

 

* * *

 

The Jedi was waiting for Rhaga when he came down out of the mountains. She stood outside the cabin, hands folded behind her back, for all the world as if he had been gone minutes rather than weeks.

He walked up to her, ragged, filthy and stinking, and shrugged off the tangled remnants of his pack with its cargo of broken parts and bones and let the heavy pelt fall with it from his shoulders. From its nest inside his tunic, he pulled the crystal and held it out to her to glimmer in the weak afternoon sunlight.

She reached out slowly, until her hand hung over his, not quite touching. The faintest of expressions touched her face, accepting and understanding, and she cupped his fingers in hers and folded them over the crystal. “There is food inside,” she told him, gesturing to the cabin, “Eat and rest. In the morning, bring this to the workshop.”

Then, “You have done well.”

And in the morning, clean and rested, he walked up to the hut with the crystal in one hand and one of the bones in the other.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Rhaga had been training for five years before he met another Jedi.

He was meditating on one of the outcrops above the cabin when the ship landed. The shock wave of its passage through the atmosphere raised the hair on his neck. He smelt the sharp scent of propellant and hyperdrive coolant. His ears popped with distant pressure changes. And something deep within him echoed to the touch of another Force-sensitive mind.

It was a small scout ship. Small and old. He recognised the design from history records his teacher had shown him. It banked over the mountainside, landing gear unfolding. He did not rise to meet it. Breaking out of meditation for such a distraction would have gone against the whole point of the exercise. Besides, with the world reverberating through his body, he did not need to look to know what was going on.

Deftly, the pilot brought the ship down on one of the wider ledges, perhaps a quarter hour's walk away. Birds scattered from the noise, their harsh cawing rising as engines whined to a stop. The pilot's satisfaction at the smooth landing was a glint of sunshine among the dark clouds of animal panic.

The hatch hissed open and the Jedi sprang on to the planet's surface. Any doubt that it was another Jedi vanished in that instant. The Force was alive in them – like his teacher, they made no effort to hide that. Unlike his teacher, they flickered warm and vibrant, welcoming firelight far away from a fortress of chill reflections.

They cut an unhurried line across the landscape, clambering over scrub and rock with obvious pleasure at being in the open air. He – all at once, Rhaga knew it was a man – found it a relief after so long cooped up in a cramped cockpit. There was a sense of purpose behind the simple enjoyment, though. This was not an idle visit or a chance respite from the flight: he was there for a reason.

Rhaga's teacher was waiting for the Jedi. She stood outside the cabin, patient and remote. Rhaga could sense no surprise at the newcomer's presence – but then, he was used to her taking everything in her stride. And perhaps she had been expecting the visit. After all, it meant very little that she had not said anything. Maybe she simply wanted to judge his reaction.

The Jedi called no greeting when he saw her there, but his emotions coloured with delighted recognition and he quickened his pace. In a few short minutes they were standing face to face, two dark and slender figures far below Rhaga's perch. “Giyra,” he heard the Jedi say, “it's been too long.”

 _Come here._ The thought washed into Rhaga's head before he could hear anything more, scattering his focus and breaking him from his meditation as cleanly as a bucket of water to the head.

He scrambled to his feet, senses fading back to normal. He stared down at the Jedi and his teacher for a second, then hurried along the ridge. If the command was not precisely urgent, it was definitely insistent and he did not want to waste any time in obeying.

As a result, he made it to the cabin in record time and arrived to hear the Jedi saying, “Of course not. We simply hoped you would feel comfortable enough to tell us yourself. Whatever distance you feel you need to keep, you are still our sister. Any assistance we can offer is yours for the asking and – ah. The young man in question! Hello there!”

The Jedi had a deep voice that seemed several sizes too big for his slim body. He smiled easily and freely, the lines on his face crinkling up with the same good humour that radiated from him through the Force. As Rhaga got closer, he noticed that the man's dark hair was, improbably, streaked with bright red. “Yarly Gunn,” he introduced himself, offering his hand to Rhaga, “Very pleased to meet you.”

“Uh.” Awkwardly, Rhaga returned the greeting and they shook. He noticed scarlet piping down the trousers of Gunn's black combat uniform, which suggested he was a Corellian. The lightsaber hanging at his hip was bright with polished chrome.

For a few seconds, they stood in silence. Gunn looked around, across the mountainside and up towards the peaks. “This really is a very beautiful planet,” he observed, “I can see why you chose it.” Then, suddenly, he asked, “Why do you want to be a Jedi?”

Rhaga stared at him, not quite able to grasp the question at first. His mind worked its way back to the crystal cave and the visions he had seen. After a moment, he said quietly, “Because I chose to be.”

“But why?” Gunn persisted, flashing his teeth good-humouredly, “I mean, why did you chose this path? One can't simply become a Jedi because it is the best option at the time. What if there is a better option further down the line? We'd never be able to keep anyone on the payroll!” He chuckled at his own joke, but his eyes never quite left Rhaga's face.

Rhaga pursed his lips and frowned. His teacher was impassive: there would be no help this time. He was on his own with this. What was he supposed to say? No – that was the wrong question. This was not about being supposed to do anything. Gunn was asking for honesty, blunt and unforgiving.

Why did he want to be a Jedi?

His mind drifted back to the cave again but this time, it kept going. He saw the visions clearly, not just as faded memories but as sharp and real as the world around him. At once, at the same time, he was a farmer, a monster, a corpse, a champion, a child and so much more. They were choices, yes, but the closer he looked, the more he realised just how different they were from who he was right that instant. He barely recognised the boy he had been, much less the other alternatives. And the image he had of himself as a Jedi, the cool, calm warrior who could stop conflict with a word – that was just the same. Perhaps he held the seeds of it, but it was as much an exaggerated phantom as the rest. The only real difference was that it was better. Not just the better option, not something to tide him over until the next goal came along, but really, honestly better.

He took a deep breath. “I want to protect, not destroy. I want to learn, not ignore. If I must fight, I will do it for others. If I must kill, I will do it respectfully. The Force lives in me. I can't change that. But I can chose what I do with it. And I chose to be a Jedi because I want to walk a path in the light, not the darkness.”

Gunn regarded him coolly, rocking back on his heels slightly. Rhaga shut his mouth with a firm clack of teeth and refused to look away. At length, Gunn smiled again. “The clearest paths are not always those that lead away from shadow,” he said softly, “And there is more to avoiding darkness than walking where the light seems to go. But wishing to protect and learn . . . that is good, whether you are a Jedi or not.” He held up his hands. “I wish you well, Rhaga Venn. Whoever you end up becoming. Now.” Whirling, he clapped. “I brought a few exotic supplies with me from my ship. What say I whip you two up a better meal than you'll have had in years?”

 


	7. Chapter 7

“Does Jedi Gunn think your teachings will lead me to the Dark Side?”

Had he been in a less pensive mood, Rhaga might have felt a little triumph at making his teacher pause in her work, for however brief an instant. “Do you?” she reposted, not looking up from her book.

He set down the pan he had just scrubbed clean and turned the scourer over in his hands, thinking hard. “No,” he concluded, “But would I know? Would you?”

A slight tilt of the head was all the answer he received.

Propping his chin up on his fists, he stared at the floor between them, at the wall, at the door through which Yarley Gunn had left some time ago to see what the night time held. It was hard not to notice that his teacher had not given him an answer to his question.

“Is he worried because you're teaching me in a way that other Jedi wouldn't?” he asked, thinking of all their many history lessons and all the many ways in which people tried to use the Force.

She exhaled gently and placed the book in her lap. “What is the Dark Side?”

 _That_ caught him by surprise, even more so than Gunn's question.

“Uh . . .” he began, then composed himself, licking the last lingering taste of spiced dumplings from the backs of his teeth. “Fear. Anger. Strong negative emotions. And selfishness. Extreme selfishness.”

His teacher's scarred fingers tapped quietly on the cover of her book. “Fear can save your life. Anger can bring justice to enslaved worlds. Strong negative emotions are part of being alive.”

Rhaga winced, seeing the shape of the trap he had put himself into. “I mean . . . allowing them to control you. Acting on them without . . . uh . . . without thinking of others.”

She tilted her head again. “So the pirate who has never felt the Force stir embraces the Dark Side? The corrupt politician? The slaver?”

He wanted to say yes and opened his mouth to do so, and stopped himself. Haste battled consideration. Logic battled instinct. “I . . . no. No, they don't. I mean . . .” He did not know what he meant and trailed helplessly off.

His teacher laid her hands flat on her knees. “Those strong in the Force feel their connection to every living thing. If they strike out, they feel the blow. You know this. I know this. Every Force sensitive in the universe knows this.” She closed her eyes. “To feel the pain of every blow you inflict _and to keep striking_. That is the Dark Side.”

“Take every thought that was ever thought,” Yarley Gunn said quietly from the doorway, suddenly _there_ as if he had always been, “and every feeling that was ever felt. Boil them down and simmer them off and you'll be left with love that can bend the stars, joy that can whirl planets from orbit and passion that would ignite space itself. And fear that pulls stronger than a black hole, anger that lights the sky hotter than any sun and hatred that would snuff out galaxies.” The ghost of his earlier beaming smiles touched his lips. “Maybe it is simply that in the light, we know this and try to keep ourselves from being pulled apart by the extremes. Maybe in the dark, we want to be the one who pulls the extremes apart.”

Rhaga's teacher did not look at Gunn. “Maybe we cannot tell the difference if we never see the extremes.”

“Maybe,” Gunn agreed with a shrug, coming in properly, “And maybe the key to recognising the extremes is to see the middle from time to time.”

Looking between the two, Rhaga got the strong sense he was seeing the echo of a very old and very deep argument. Any speculation – or ill-advised questions – on the subject was cut off by Gunn setting himself down on the floor beside them. “We could all go to the dark,” he said, half-closing his eyes and scratching at the stubble on his chin, “We could spend all night arguing what the dark and light are and where, or even if, the dividing line can be drawn. Far wiser minds than any of us have tried and failed to come up with definite answers. All I know is the evidence I see before me. So no, I do not think you are in danger of falling, Rhaga Venn. Not here. Not now. If that changes . . . well, we deal with that if it comes.”

The hairs on the back of Rhaga's neck stirred slightly and he put a hand up to press them back down again. It could have been fear, a flash of premonition or simply uncertainty. By the time it fully registered, he was already swallowing the emotion, letting it fade into the rest of him.

If it came, they would deal with it.

“May I ask you a question, Jedi Gunn?”

The Corellian grinned. “I'd be very disappointed if you didn't.”

“Where did you get your ship?”

“Oh . . . well, now, there's a story . . .”

 


	8. Chapter 8

Contact flashes bit into the crisp morning air, the whining hum of blade on blade drilling its way up Rhaga's arms. The world spun under his feet, whirling with every dancing step. He let his instincts carry him, as ever moving as a spark in a lazy up-draft, darting hither and thither around his opponent's storm-swift attacks. His crystal sang in the heart of his lightsaber, in the heart of the fierce white blade, in the heart beating in his chest.

Yarley Gunn was everywhere at once, sky-blue blade so much an extension of his arm that Rhaga could feel the distinction disappear as they sparred. This was not a contest of swords but of will and essence. The goal was not victory so much as understanding.

“Why do the Jedi fight like this?” Gunn asked, words striking below Rhaga's defences even as his left-handed grip allowed him to deflect the Jedi's physical lunge.

“To defend,” he answered in a rush of air he could ill-afford to spare, “To protect.”

“Then why like this? Why to cut and sever?”

No answer sprang to his mind and he was caught off-guard by a curving parry and nearly bowled over by Gunn's open hand, coming hyper-drive fast for his chest.

He bounded backwards, giving himself the space to regain his balance. “A lightsaber can block blaster-fire and cut through any restraint. It can defeat the tools the rest of the galaxy uses to do harm.”

“Interesting.” Gunn pursued him, not giving him room to manoeuvre. “Yet we can tear guns from their owners' hands and split chains with our minds. Why waste time with weapons at all?”

Bending around the assault, Rhaga slipped behind him, going for a broad cut. “Because then you just see the chains and the guns, not the people behind them.”

Gunn turned him aside with ease. “But still: why a sword?”

Drawing a deep breath into his lungs, Rhaga centred himself in his surroundings, letting go of the distinction between his sword and his hand, the feel of the metal and bone, the clench of sweating flesh. He let himself roll into the hum and the song, let it flow into every cell of his body. “Focus.”

Swinging with all his strength, he slammed against Gunn's blade in one stupendous blow. Waited for the crackle of meeting. For the Jedi to lean into the block. Then turned off his lightsaber.

Gunn pitched forward momentarily. Rhaga turned right around on his heel, allowing the older man to move past him. And reignited his saber so the blade stopped a hair's width above Gunn's right thumb, a fraction short of slicing down through the emitter it was bent around.

“A lightsaber is focus,” he said through the white flame in his hands, “It is here, now. When it cuts, we know what it is cutting. Who it is cutting. We can't distance ourselves from that or forget. If we must fight, there is no barrier between us and the pain we cause.”

The Jedi was still as stone, unmoving and unflinching. His eyes regarded Rhaga steadily, without malice.

His fingers twitched and his blade snapped out. “Not bad,” he grinned.

Hesitating only a heartbeat, Rhaga raised his sword and turned it off properly. The emptiness and quiet rang in his ears.

“I don't know whether you will become a Jedi or not,” Gunn confessed, “That is not for me to say. But I will tell you this.” He lifted his gaze to where Rhaga's teacher stood, arms folded, expressionless. “You are your master's student from the soles of your feet to the tips of your hair.” Throwing a companionable arm around Rhaga's shoulder, he laughed. “She never let me get away with fighting fair either!”

 

Just for a split second, Rhaga was sure he caught the dream of a smile cross behind his teacher's lips.

* * *

Jedi Gunn spent the rest of the day teaching him starship maintenance. His teacher had told him once that the power of the Force was insignificant in the face of an inability to repair one's equipment. Visions of his lightsaber failing at a crucial juncture or being stranded on a distant world due to technological error had him paying close attention to her lessens on the subject and he watched Gunn's work with the same intensity.

Some time after midday, the three of them ate their last meal together and Gunn said his goodbyes. He clasped Rhaga's arm and wished him well, promising that they would have a drink together when he was old enough to be allowed into the bars on Eskaton.

To Rhaga's teacher, he offered a half-bow that she returned and a grin she did not. “Farewell, Giyra. 'Til we meet again.”

“The Force be with you,” she murmured.

* * *

They watched the scout ship streak into the darkening sky, just the two of them again. The world seemed suddenly much quieter. Yarley Gunn's echoes were already disappearing into the tides of life washing across the mountains. Rhaga reached out for the ghostly footsteps, turning the feel of them over in his mind, trying perhaps to keep hold of some trace of the older man's exuberant presence.

His teacher laid her hand on his shoulder. “Everything passes. Teachings. Meetings. Friends.”

Taking a deep breath, Rhaga let the footsteps swirl into the wind. “I know.”

He felt her look down at him. “Not yet.” Her hand lifted. “Come.”

With one last lingering look at the sky, he followed her back to the cabin.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Three days before his seventeenth birthday, Rhaga's teacher told him to pack his equipment and follow her to the transport ship. Neither task took long. His equipment, his spare clothing, his lightsaber – these were all close at hand and ready to be moved. And with the strength of six years training, the journey down the mountain was easy. They were at the ship in an hour, muscles singing with exertion. His teacher scarcely broke step, triggering the ramp and striding swiftly inside.

He followed, knowing without being told where to stow his pack, to seal the hatch behind them. The protocol droid stirred in its recharge bay, photoreceptors blinking as the cabin lights came on. A curt gesture stilled it and it sank gratefully back into quiescence.

The ship came to life, the engines coughing their way out of their long sleep. Rhaga slipped quietly into the co-pilot's seat, watching his teacher's hands play across the controls. He knew the launch sequences, enough to be able to trigger the autopilot and plot a hyperspace jump to the nearest inhabited world. In time, he could probably have mastered more than the basics. He wondered if this was to be another flying lesson.

With the slightest of jerks, the ship rose into the air and jumped towards space. In minutes they were above the atmosphere, angling away from the planet. He gazed through the view port at the grey-green arc, at once disconcerted by the thought of leaving and aware that the world was still, and would always, be with him.

They flew out into the star-speckled blackness, the planet dwindling to a dot of colour behind them. The void yawned around them, so empty of life it was shocking to Rhaga's awakened senses. Yet despite the quiet, he could still feel the flow of the Force passing through his body, carried on the starlight.

His teacher released the controls and sat back, closing her eyes. For a long moment, she said nothing. He waited patiently for her to speak, uncertain premonition earthing into the calm she had taught him.

“If you wish it, I will take you home to your family.”

That was certainly not what he had expected her to say. His eyes refocused on the faint reflection in the transparisteel before him. It was a long time since he had properly looked into a mirror. In all honesty, he hardly recognised himself: cheeks hollowed by tough living; hair, grown properly pale with puberty, hanging in a roughly cut curtain down to the nape of his neck; mouth somehow sterner than he remembered.

He was not the same person that had run away from his family. And he was. His crime still hung inside him. Snared by teaching, snagged so that it could not twist his path, but still there. He could not imagine himself returning home, embracing his mothers, his brothers –

“I do not wish that,” he told his reflection.

“What do you?”

“To continue my training. To learn more.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes.”

She opened her eyes and tapped coordinates into the navigation computer. Her hand rested on the hyperspace lever. Rhaga caught the tiniest flicker in the silver pool of her mind. Then she pressed the lever home and the universe collapsed into a tunnel of shimmering light.

 

* * *

 

Salintam hit Rhaga with the force of an ocean wave. The sheer scale of it, of hundreds and hundreds of people living and thinking in the same city – it was enormous and all inside his head at once. Stupidly, he clamped his hands to the sides of his head, as if that would in any way help him sort through the rush.

His teacher's thoughts brushed against his and he regained his mental footing. He let the wave break over him and stepped through to the other side, the voices receding below the threshold of his hearing, fading to a faint pressure that could no longer deafen him.

They were side by side at the top of the ramp, the pungent air rolling over them. The space port bustled and teamed, passengers and pilots rubbing shoulders with traders and pick-pockets. A few of the species he recognised. Many, he did not. Ships of every variety plied the air above and choked the landing pads. Speeders and swoops buzzed through every gap. All was noise, confusion and pollution.

Rhaga climbed slowly down to the ground, uncertain and unsure in the face of urban chaos after so long in the empty wild. Even with his thoughts under control, it was hard to find his balance in this new environment. He shifted the pack on his back and looked behind him. His teacher had made no move to follow him down.

“What are we doing here?” he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“Survive,” she said simply and shut the hatch.

 


	10. Chapter 10

At first, Rhaga did not know what to do. He drifted away from the landing pad, the echoes of the transport's departure still ringing in his ears. Even shouldering through the crowd, brushing against their sleeves and feelings, he suffered a brief pang of loneliness and abandonment. This was not his environment. It never had been. Eleven years on a world where the biggest town was scarcely bigger than this space port, the rest up a mountain – what did he know of cities?

There was much he needed to learn if he was to do as his teacher had instructed.

As he slipped towards the entrance into the city proper, he narrowed his focus on to the immediate situation. Would he have to pass through some sort of immigration control? There did not seem to be anything up ahead. Instead, the crowd was just flowing out on to the streets. That definitely made things easier.

But what now? Having no money to his name was going to make it hard to live in the kind of place that ran on credits. He would need at least enough to acquire food honestly over a sustained period of time. The thought crossed his mind that this was just the situation that called for a working knowledge of sabaac, but since he had nothing to wager, that idea would not go very far. In the short term at least, survival was going to require gainful employment.

Now he just needed to find someone willing to give him a job.

 

* * *

 

Salintam welcomed visitors with open arms. Rhaga discovered this quickly as he passed rows of citizen information terminals and holographic guides. Beyond the walls, off-worlders were required to register with the planetary authorities and carry the appropriate documentation. Within, however, they were free to come and go as they pleased, which was easy enough in a metropolis that sprawled for kilometres in all directions, including down and up. Free trade was god in the city: as an important stop-off point before the long, empty stretches of the Col-pahd Reach on top of sitting at the intersection of two major sector-spanning polities, it was a haven for traders and merchants of all kinds.

In theory, this presented numerous openings for potential work. In practice, rather less so.

Rhaga scrutinised himself in the darkened window of an emporium selling objects of ill-defined and possibly painful use. He had to admit, his clothes were a problem. Not inaccurately, they made him look like a herder just come in out of the wild. There was little outward evidence of his training and instinctively he knew that advertising that training vocally would not earn him any favourable interest.

Looking like a farmer was not something he would have automatically assumed counted against him. Several long hours traipsing from store to store had shown categorically that it did. Besides, it was not just his clothes: he was beginning to suspect that his lack of any great height and the general wiriness of his body were not doing him any favours either. Clearly, the traders of Salintam expected a good deal more girth for their credits than he could provide.

Once physicality proved a problem, he fell back on skill. There were dozens of mechanics shops on the space port levels alone and it seemed like he had applied at every single one of them. Most turned him away with scarcely a glance. The few that did appraise him more closely asked, reasonably enough, for proof of his qualifications. Such assurances as he could give them were patently not enough and by the end, he was more or less talking himself out of the job on his own initiative.

On top of all that, he was being followed.

Methodically eliminating possible workplaces had taken him into the upper levels, to streets slung between the ever-rising towers. As he climbed, he had been aware of a constant presence at his heel. He first noticed it after finding no luck at a cantina on the corner of a busy crossroads and it had been flitting around the edge of his conscious thoughts ever since. There was nothing overtly threatening in the sense of whoever it was, yet its very persistence concerned him.

Who would want to follow him? He hardly looked wealthy enough to rob. Besides, pursuing him for hours without making any kind of move seemed beyond the realm of opportunism. But then what?

He tried several times to discern the identity of his tail, without success. Tracking targets through crowds was a great deal more complicated than tracing them through forest and brush. The constant shifting of the environment and the sheer variety of minds brushing up against his were going to take a lot of getting used to.

With a sigh, he drifted away from the store-front and across the walkway to the wall that separated pedestrians from the fifty storey drop down to what was nominally ground level for the city. Speeders whipped past at speeds that were not even nominally safe. Ozone and refuse hung heavy on the breeze, mingling with spiced meat and spacecraft fuel. He breathed it in, centring himself amidst it all. The Force was turbulent with complexity and contradictory emotions. It reminded him of the snowstorm, ever forming and reforming, patterns torn to pieces almost as soon as they were visible.

Or was it simply that he could not yet see the larger patterns?

The whisper that was his pursuer sounded closer. He could almost see the shape they left in the Force now. Going still, he kept his hands resting on the wall, his face pointed out towards the skyline. Let them approach. If this was the point they made their move, he would be ready –

A hand landed on the back of his shoulder. “Hey buddy!”

He spun, a hair's breadth from flipping his assailant over into the chasm. The twi'lek man beamed at him, grin full of slightly pointed teeth.

“You looking for a job, huh?”

Rhaga regarded him steadily, taking in the man's battered labourer's trousers, the sleeveless vest that hung loose and open to show off a slim, muscled torso and slender arms ringed in tattoos, his narrow face and the black bands tied around his head-tails. Instinct told him this was not the kind of person it was wise to trust. But his senses, the background hum of his feelings . . .

“Yes,” he said, taking the chance.

The twi'lek's smile somehow widened, crinkling his eyes. “Try Kariz'lal's shop. Third level, Torma District.” With his free hand, he produced a small printed card from a vest pocket. “I hear she's got an opening for an assistant and you look just the right sort.” He pressed the card into Rhaga's hand, touched the side of his head in a jaunty salute and slipped effortlessly back into the crowd.

Rhaga blinked.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew - been a while since I worked on this one. I can promise regular weekly updates for the next five weeks though, so hopefully that'll make up a bit for the delay in continuing it.

Kariz'lal's shop turned out to be buried at the back of an expansive covered market. It took Rhaga more than two hours to find the door and even then, he was not sure he was in the right place until he pushed it open. The sign outside was in desperate need of repainting and it did not look as though anyone had cleaned the doorstep for years. A vague impulse, inherited perhaps from his dark-haired mother, made it hard not to tut at that.

Inside was a different story. That was not to say that it was strictly speaking clean or remotely tidy. But it was the dirt and disorder of a functioning workshop, not anywhere that had been neglected. Half-assembled droids lined the workbenches, parts big and small scattered in small constellations around them. They were as varied as they were numerous, no model quite the same as the others. There were protocol droids hanging from overhead winches, astromechs stripped to their inner workings, even some sort of wardroid, many-armed and fearsome, propped up against the rear wall.

It was a gruesome sight, all those stilled forms.

On the verge of calling out for the owner, he stopped as a featureless grey orb zipped from concealment at the back of the shop and dropped into a hover, a hand's breadth from his face.

[K'lck kk't c'kk'tt' k'lt?] it chattered accusingly.

“Ah . . . I would like to speak to Kariz'lal,” he told it.

[Kkc't'k kt'ccl'c]

Spinning, it shot back across the room and vanished around the corner from which it had emerged. A burst of staccato language erupted, followed by a more measured tone. “All right, all right, I'm coming.”

The second voice was electronic too, albeit much more subtly so. It turned out to come from a dull metal box slung around the neck of a tall, whip-thin insectoid who stalked slowly into the shop with an air of dignified exasperation.

The hovering droid buzzed past, chittering and squawking impatiently.

“Quiet down you,” its owner admonished, “I'm going as fast as I can. Now then, what's this?” Bulbous black eyes swivelled to regard Rhaga curiously. “If you have something for me to fix, you're hiding it well.”

“Oh. No. I came to ask about a job. I was told you needed an assistant.”

The droid emitted a sharp noise that sounded suspiciously like a cackle. The insectoid blinked at it, then at Rhaga. “And who exactly told you that, hm? No, let me guess. Longshanks, poking his pointy nose in where it's not needed again, I suppose?”

“Ah – well, I . . .” He was not quite sure how to respond to that, especially since he would not have called the twi’lek’s nose ‘pointy’, more pleasingly straight. “He gave me this card.”

Plucking it from his hand with two long, spindly fingers, the proprietor held it up to the light. “Hm. Knew it. That's Longshanks' hand writing for sure.”

“So you are Kariz'lal?”

“What's left of her, I am.” She bent her domed head closer to his, swept-back antenna twitching slightly. Up close, he could see how faded her chitinous plating was, the blue-green turned almost grey in parts. “And you are?”

Belatedly, he introduced himself.

“And what exactly is it that makes you think you have what it takes to work for me, Rhaga Venn?” Kariz'lal straightened and encompassed her shop in a single wide gesture. “You know what I am? I'm verpine. You know what that means? It means the finest attention to detail! Mechanical genius! Unparalleled skill with one's manipulating appendages! Do you possess these qualities, Rhaga Venn?”

He was forced to admit that it was unlikely. “But know how to make some repairs already and I will learn whatever you are willing to teach me.”

The ball-droid flicked contemptuously around his back. [Vzzk'lct!]

Kariz'lal said nothing but turned slightly away. She reached out, hand hovering over one of the workbenches for a moment. Then she scooped a small block of complex electronics up and handed it to Rhaga. “What is wrong with this?”

Taking the device, he turned it over a couple of times before shrugging off his bag and sinking into a cross-legged position on the floor. There was plenty of light and it was easy enough to gently detach the outer sections. His fingers played through the wires and chips, his focus following where they led. The thing was not unlike one of the command actuators from Yarley Gunn's scout ship, though far more compact and complicated. He traced his way past the transtators, noting the scorching and carbonisation that had claimed them. And there – one of the regulators had shorted. Without that, the whole board would have fried.

He was about to say so when his attention was tugged a little deeper into the damage, to the connection to the next board. Of course . . .

“I think . . . this has been cross-wired,” he said slowly, “I don't know what this is but it looks like the power lines have been wired the wrong way around for their rating. So it would have fed too much load into this side and not enough into this. Is that right?”

[K'lict v'kllccz't] said the droid.

“Hm.” Kariz'lal took the box back and held it close to her eye. “This is a motivator unit for a BB type astromech and yes, that is the problem. Shoddy maintenance. And the first time I examined it, I missed that completely.” She made a snickering noise that might have been a chuckle. “My sight isn't what it used to be. My hands aren't either, truth be told. Which that dratted Longshanks knows all too well, curse him. So he sends me a sharp-eyed human to help me out. Well, fine. I'll admit I need it.”

She dropped the motivator on to the bench and hooked her fingers into the waist-band of her coveralls. “You can have a trial run. See how quickly you learn. If it works out, I'll keep you on. Can't offer you much in the way of pay but there's room to sleep at the back and I don't eat much, so you're welcome to a food allowance. That seem fair?”

“Very,” Rhaga agreed, getting to his feet, “Thank you.”

“Hm. Possibly. Better to thank Longshanks.”

“Will I see him again?” He found the idea oddly appealing, if only so he could find out why the twi'lek had pointed him to the shop.

“Oh, I'm sure you will.” Kariz'lal's antenna twitched again. “That one always turns up sooner or later. Now let's get you started on learning where everything is.”


	12. Chapter 12

As it turned out, it was rather later than sooner that Longshanks the twi'lek turned up again.

Working for Kariz'lal was demanding in a way that years of intense physical training could not compare to. The sheer concentration required to memorise reams of components and diagrams, to work on delicate circuits for hours on end and to reconstruct droids to verpine standards was utterly exhausting. Night after night, Rhaga went to bed with his head swimming in electronics, with barely enough energy to meditate.

He began to savour his free time. Minutes away from the workbench were precious and not to be wasted. He took to carefully planning out his evenings so that he could maintain his training and studies. At every meal, he would prop a book or datapad opposite him, cramming in knowledge while he ate. His morning exercises, performed in the shop's grimly overshadowed yard or around the edges of the market place, felt snatched and hurried with the thought of the day's tasks looming over them.

In deference to not driving her assistant into an early grave, Kariz'lal gave him every sixth day off and he used the freedom to explore Salintam. He prowled the streets, high and low, building a deeper understanding of his new home. As vast and sprawling as the city was, the same patterns repeated themselves from sewers to tower-tops: certain individuals and groups exercising influence over others by means of power, monetary and physical. In the dilapidated but relatively stable district in which Kariz'lal's shop sat, that group was the local mercantile guild and their semi-legal enforcers. They controlled the rents and authorised incoming traders and were a reasonably small evil, concerned mainly with their own internal politics rather than making trouble with those in their charge. Indeed, he soon discovered they spent a great deal of their time actively opposing less official gangs who made forays from neighbouring districts, hoping to extort protection money from the locals.

Salintam was a maze of such interactions, cliques big and small jockeying for position and prestige within a hazily defined social hierarchy – the wealthy city leaders at one end, the homeless diaspora at the other. Those people at the bottom, those who had come to the planet for any number of reasons and ended up trapped between the stringent rules on who was allowed beyond Salintam's walls and the high prices demanded by the captains of departing ships, were at the mercy of everyone above them. They were vulnerable, used by those outside the law and exploited by those within it, their only effective defence being to form gangs of their own and meet violence with violence.

An air of poisoned hopelessness hung heavy over the slums that cowered around the roots of the great towers. It made Rhaga feel very small. What use were his skills in the face of injustice on such an epidemic scale? He could help one or two people, silently sharing his food allowance with the market traders' runners or diverting elderly beggars away from the thugs who would have robbed them for their meagre takings but what was that except a drop in an ocean, quickly lost to the tides?

There were charities who worked to alleviate the suffering of the 'indigents' – even some that worked from within the very government that categorised them as such. Those at least seemed to make some headway to improving things and more than once he found himself working on one of their medical droids. It told him much that Kariz'lal charged fees for such commissions that were a fraction of what she was entitled to.

But still more travellers arrived every day and the city gates opened for less and less. Charity felt like a poor rival to long-established selfishness.

Perhaps it was that ever-present darkness or perhaps he simply found loneliness more natural: either way, Rhaga made no friends during the first months of his employment. He watched everything and could track individual people through their daily routines with exceptional precision, yet he rarely spoke with anyone beyond Kariz'lal. Customers naturally deferred to her over her inexperienced human assistant and his exploration of the city was done at a remove. It was easier to cloak himself in stillness and anonymity than try to interact with the people he slipped past. A hunter's instincts kept him wary of others and aside from a few brief forays, he actively avoided the diverse entertainments that crowded so many of Salintam's streets. The bright, flashing signs and their lurid promises held no interest for him, whatever the urges of a teenage body. He found the emotions that swirled about them too distracting, too at odds with the pleasure they alleged to provide. Besides, he could not realistically afford their cost.

If Kariz'lal found his self-imposed solitude troubling, she did not comment on it. Nor did she pry into the details of his life before coming to the city. Likely as not, she did not care. He discovered quickly that despite her occasional bouts of philanthropy, the verpine cared little for anything beyond the inner workings of droids. As she put it, she had no time to worry about the rest of the universe. In that, they suited each other's temperaments well enough.

The only other being he was in regular contact with was Kariz'lal's truculent monitor droid and the metal ball made it quite clear that it considered him little more than a jumped-up doorstop. He did not take it personally. That was how it viewed all beings who were not its master.

In time, Rhaga settled into the rhythms of his new routine. The city's bombast became a background hum, as natural as the mountains had been. He was swept into the patterns of the lives that surrounded him, drawn down into whirlpools of apathy and eddying resignation. He survived.

And so it continued until the day he climbed the narrow staircase to his cramped room and found Longshanks lying on his bed.


	13. Chapter 13

The twi'lek grinned at him as he came in, stretched languidly and shrugged his head-tails from his shoulders. As far as Rhaga could tell, he was dressed in exactly the same clothes he had been wearing several weeks before and it looked very much like he had been sleeping in them every night since. This apparently had done nothing to dampen his mood.

“Hello again my friend!” he greeted enthusiastically, sitting up, “Amazing! You look even more scruffy in those overalls than you did in those herder's rags.”

“Did you break into my room to insult my clothing?”

“I don't need to break into your room to do that. It's impressive though. Not many people can look that ungainly without effort but it clearly comes naturally to you.”

Rhaga pulled the door across and leant against it. He was uncertain what Kariz'lal's feelings on her assistant entertaining strange men in his room would be and was in no hurry to find out. He studied his guest dubiously, trying to get a clear impression of how the Force moved about him. “Is your name really 'Longshanks'?”

In response, the man kicked his heels and stretched out his legs. “It's descriptive, I'll give her that. But no. Or yes and no. It's one of the names I've been given. I have others. You can call me Shem, if you like.”

“All right. Why did you help me?”

Shem quirked his head in a brief gesture of indifference. “Kariz'lal needed an assistant. I was helping her.”

“Then why me? If I looked so scruffy, why assume I had any technical skill at all?”

“I dunno. I guess I just had a good feeling about you.” It was said off-hand, with a disarming smirk and yet the implication of his words was as clear as a morning bell.

“I see,” Rhaga acknowledged simply. Still his impression of the man remained slippery. There was nothing sinister in that, exactly, only that it seemed as though he did not trouble the world around him a very great deal and that made it hard to get a grip on the idea of him.

Which left the surface details: the smooth muscle on his arms and chest, the deliberately casual way in which he shifted his weight and angled his body, the slight burn-scar running down his neck, another on his left forearm. Markings, clear or faint, of training. And beyond that – youth. Somewhat surprisingly, behind the smile and the thinness of his cheeks, Shem did not look all that much older than Rhaga. An illusion created by not understanding twi'lek physiology? Or was the apparent maturity simply down to the assurance with which he carried himself?

“We could carry on staring at each other all night,” Shem suggested with another smirk, “If you like.”

“That's not why you came here.”

“Isn't it?”

Rhaga pressed his lips together. Clearly Shem enjoyed games. “Why did you come here?”

The twi'lek sprang forward to that he was kneeling on the end of the bed, bringing his face abruptly close to Rhaga's. “I want you to come down to the lower levels with me.”

“Why?”

The grin came back. “Come with me and see.”

 

* * *

 

Shem moved through the fabric of Salintam at dizzying speed. However many short-cuts and hidden pathways Rhaga had scouted for himself, his companion was the clear master of travelling through the city fast and unseen. He led the way in bounding leaps across service bridges and decorative spans, in bursts of hunched scurrying down access ducts and through loose gratings, in cheery silence below unsuspecting watchmen and gang sentries. Keeping up with him was hard, bringing back strong memories of seemingly endless chases through woodland and valley. His footing never wavered no matter how many twists their route took and he took sudden pitfalls and hurdles utterly in his stride. It took all Rhaga's skill to keep on his heel.

Was that what this was? A test of ability, the same as the hunts on which his teacher had led him so often? That, though, did not account for clear pleasure Shem took in the journey, a delicate thread that danced over the surface of his mind halfway between thrill and satisfaction. Rhaga pushed himself to keep close, to draw on that joy and trust in their path.

At last – and somewhere on the journey he had lost his sense of time – they reached one of the indigent slums. With a flourish, Shem pointed the way to a long, low building that seemed to be a temporary structure shored up to the point of grudging permanence. They went inside and Rhaga found himself standing in a cross between a make-shift infirmary and a ramshackle food-hall. Down one side, a handful of people in white tunics were treating an assortment of abrasions, broken bones and minor infections, the air above their patients alive with glittering anti-septic fields. On the opposite side of a partition running down the centre of the room, a muddled collection of workers handed out boxes of nutrient bars to a ragged queue that stretched from the far door to the near.

Rhaga looked questioningly at Shem.

“You were starting to despair,” the twi'lek said, his voice dropping quite suddenly into solemn hush, “I've seen it. The city's getting to you. All the worst parts of it. So I brought you to one of the best.”

“Ho there!” A large burly mass of fur barrelled up to them, clapping its enormous hands. “Where've you been, you green rascal, eh? We've been missin' your assistance!”

Shem bowed theatrically, his head-tails thudding against the back of his vest. “Been recruiting, Lord Bartle.” Reached out, he off-handedly shoved Rhaga forward. “Brought you another young fellow to fetch and carry.”

“Hmmm.” The creature examined him with three beady yellow eyes. “Looks a bit scrawny to me but I'm sure we can use the extra hands.”

“He can swing a mean hydro-spanner too, or so I hear.”

“Is that so? Hmmm. Can't he talk for 'imself?”

“I can,” Rhaga said, frowning, “This is one of the charity clinics, isn't it?”

“This is _the_ charity clinic,” Bartle intoned proudly, “at least so far as this district is concerned. We're better stocked and have better supply lines than a dozen others this side of the river. It's not a competition, a'course, but if it were, we'd be winnin' the thing.”

“And you always need volunteers, isn't that right?” Shem asked, shooting a glance at Rhaga.

“Absolutely! The more the better. Speakin' of which –” One great paw landed on Shem's shoulder, spun him around and shoved him back towards the door. “You get on and help Ty-Three-Oh get the latest batch of medical kits distributed to Ma Varnis' house. Some honest toil always does you good.”

“You mean bores me rigid and dulls my wits!” he protested, allowing himself to be propelled regardless. With a last grin at Rhaga, he vanished outside.

Bartle turned ponderously to Rhaga, eyes blinking in sequence. “As for you . . . better get over and help hand out some grub. I'd make you a medico but I don't have time to see how good you are at setting bones just now. Hmmm. And is it true you're a techy sort? Good! You can take a look at our second generator later – fed up of running this place on half-power. Well don't just stand there like a fruit, lad! Get stuck in!”

 

* * *

 

Hours later, when the shift changed and the next set of volunteers arrived to take charge of the clinic, Rhaga found Shem leaning against one of the sputtering lampposts across the street. He looked very pleased with himself. “Bartle didn't work you too hard on your first day, did they?”

Rhaga knuckled the ache in his neck, replaying images of the people who had come to collect food across his mind's eye. A parade of weary faces and lost hopes. Easy to believe they were grinding through their lives on sheer momentum. Yet the clinic meant something and he saw the knowledge that they were not forgotten raise spirits and ease worry. Not always, and despair clung on thickly in the dingy night air. But sometimes. Enough times to stir the need to do more. “No. No they didn't.”

“Good! You looked at that generator for them yet?”

“They said they'd show me next time I came down.”

Shem widened his eyes in exaggerated curiosity. “There's going to be a next time?”

Rhaga glanced back at the clinic, picturing his teacher as she gave him his last instruction. Once again, just surviving was not enough. “Yes,” he said, simply.

Shen grinned.


	14. Chapter 14

Working at Lord Bartle's clinic brought Rhaga the kind of peace he had not felt since leaving the nameless planet. It was not just the immediatly pleasing sensation of being able to help other people – that was part of it but not the whole. The work got him involved, forced him to step outside the immediate confines of both Kariz'lal's shop and his own head and become properly part of the world around him. He talked to people and got to know them, to understand their problems and fears, to feel his actions affect them and their responses affect his actions. In doing so, he remembered how to feel alive again.

Bartle themself was an enormous part of that. There was a deep and abiding determination lurking beneath the energetic and furry exterior. Where others might have contented themselves with pouring money from on high or simply running a charity, Bartle had jumped in on the ground and got their hands dirty trying to make life better for the indigent population. They did not just organise the delivery of heaters and generators, they helped install and maintain them. They did not simply buy in food, they cooked it and handed it out alongside the other volunteers. And when it came to campaigning, Bartle did not just arrange for journalists and ministers to hear about the problems of indigents or distribute affecting images – they dragged them down to the slums and showed them exactly what life was like for people who could not afford an existence in the upper levels.

Their passion was infectious, their will incomparable. It was energising to work alongside them, to witness the waves of change they sent rippling into the world around them.

The other volunteers, of every age and species, felt it too. Rhaga could see them sharing in Bartle's zeal, channelling it into their work whether they were from the higher levels or indigent themselves. The clinic ran on a radiating desire to make things better. Being a Jedi simply meant that was obvious.

No doubt it was obvious to Shem as well.

Even as the days turned to weeks and the weeks edged into months, Rhaga learnt little of the twi'lek's history or nature. He simply turned up whenever Rhaga was setting off down to the slums, then again when he was getting ready to return. Bartle would always whisk him away on errands while Rhaga worked but what he did with his time otherwise remained a mystery. Where Shem lived, why he was in Salintam, how he came to know Bartle and Kariz'lal – not to mention the dozens of other people he seemed to be on nickname terms with – were all questions that he danced around as easily as he danced through the city itself. It should have been frustrating but either Rhaga had a greater grasp of Jedi balance than he had thought or he enjoyed Shem's company too much to care.

Whatever the case, however slippery and elusive Shem remained, Rhaga was content to accept it until the other man decided to give up the game and give him straight answers. There was no rush and there was plenty to keep him occupied in the meantime. While Bartle wanted him in the clinic and Kariz'lal wanted him her shop, while he was helping those in need, satiating his curiosity could wait.


	15. Chapter 15

It was the better part of two months before circumstances finally caused Shem to open up a little.

They were making their way home through the levels immediately above the slums, still firmly in Salintam's underbelly, where the buildings were officially uninhabited storehouses and automated factories. The place was uncomfortably warm and filled with the unending throbbing of heavy machinery. Rhaga was used to that by then. They passed through often and his senses brushed against familiar minds lurking in the shadows.

Shem was, for reasons best known to himself, extolling the virtues of the dancers in a club six levels up, punctuating his arguments with erratic gestures that set his vest flapping against his skin and his head-tails pattering against his back. Rhaga was only half listening, preferring to keep watch on the things actually around them. He had come to appreciate that the twi'lek spent a lot of time saying a few things with a great many words, to an extent that must surely have been deliberate. It was an interesting skill.

By slinking along the gantries that wound between the heat-exchanges and the feed pipes, they could cut a path over the maze of alleys and dead-ends they would otherwise have had to navigate. He wondered at that sometimes, whether it was a case of taking the easy way when the right way would have been to walk the harder path with everyone else. But they did that almost as often as they took the gantry way and Rhaga suspected that Shem's choice of path depended more on which he had most recently travelled than on impatience or expediency. There was not exactly a pattern to which routes he led Rhaga through on which occasions but averaging over the chaos, they seemed to cover the same portions of the city with some regularity. Shem's wards, as he was coming to think of them.

“And then they go into this duet routine that is, I have to tell you, one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen.” A leap across the chasm that separated two parallel walkways barely interrupted Shem's monologue. “It's the kind of thing that gets you banned from a star system! Not that that seems to worry the bunch of ministers who come round to watch every mid-week. Suppose that means it's exempt from their morality drives. Maybe because it's not happening down here. That seems to be the main reason why things are bad, if you listen to them – because they don't happen in the upper levels. Anyway, this routine – well, it sort of starts with the male doing, uh, this –” Distractingly, Shem started to demonstrate what he was describing. “And then the female does – this, only on his –”

Rhaga's head whipped around at the surge of pain and violence that erupted from somewhere to his left. In the same moment, Shem stopped talking and when Rhaga glanced at him, he was staring in the same direction, eyes narrowed. Without a word to one another, they leapt in sync for the gantry that would take them towards the feeling. Given his longer stride, Shem quickly pulled ahead and Rhaga was required to perform a certain amount of acrobatics to keep up.

Almost before he had really processed what they were doing – what they were _both_ doing – they were there, on the edge of a warehouse roof, looking down into a blind alley.

The scene was self-explanatory. An ithorian couple cowered against the wall, one cradling the other's arm and trying to stem the flow of blood from a vicious cut. A human and a devaronian, female and male, loomed over them, leering, brandishing make-shift knives. The human held a plain carry-bag, the straps hanging sliced apart. The devaronian was shaking out a coat that had clearly been snatched from the uninjured ithorian.

Rhaga reached under his tunic without thinking, fingers finding his lightsaber, clipped to the back of his belt. The jump from roof to wall to ground was already formed in his imagination, the Force singing in his veins. He tensed –

Shem's hand locked around his arm.

Thick fear rolled up from the ithorians, the tranquil depths of their minds stirred into panic. The human was enjoying it, the rush of power this small victory gave her. The devaronian was just impatient for profit, disgusted with the slim pickings in his prey's pockets. Instinct demanded Rhaga put himself between attacker and attacked. The impulse flooded his body, urging him forwards.

But he could not move. Shem's iron grip held him paralysed.

With his free hand, Shem scooped up a lump of loose roofing and flung it in a high arc at the gantry crossing over the opposite building. No. At the staircase leading from that gantry down to street level. It landed neatly on the edge of the top step with a loud clang. And then tumbled to the next one down. And the one after that. The impacts rang out across the alley, sounding almost exactly like someone descending at a run towards the scene of the crime in progress.

The thieves froze in their tracks, looking as one towards the din. Improbably, the rock kept falling in regular bounces all the way down, long after it should have come to a rest. Confusion and uncertainty flooded their minds as they heard the 'footsteps' rushing closer. Shem heaved another rock at the staircase and now there were two sets of boots crashing downwards. The thieves looked at each other. Came to a silent agreement. Ran for it.

Somehow, as they made their escape, the ithorians' bag slipped from the human's grip, snagging on – not very much of anything, really. With the footsteps apparently pounding in pursuit, the sounds distorting around the maze of buildings, she did not take the time to go back for it.

Shem loosened his grip on Rhaga's arm, loosened his stance. The Force whispered around him and fell silent. The rocks reached the ground and finally stopped. The ithorians got shakily to their feet, clinging to one another. The one who was injured stumbled, legs not quite up to the effort yet.

“We should get down there and help them,” Rhaga said.

“Huh.” Shem jerked his head. “No questions?”

“Many. When those people are safe, I'll start asking them.”

With a laugh, he gestured towards the gantry. “After you, then.”


	16. Chapter 16

“You are a Jedi?” They were back in Rhaga's room. He was perched on top of the clothes chest. It was about the only place to sit with Shem sprawling across the bed.

“Unless that's _not_ a lightsaber in your pants,” his friend said, showing his pointed teeth, “so are you.”

Rhaga shifted so he could unclip his saber from the back of his belt. He held it out, pommel-first.

Shem responded by digging about in the pockets of his trousers and producing an unremarkable dark grey cylinder that could have been anything from a power-pack to an engine component but of course was nothing of the kind. When he handed it over, it sat heavy in Rhaga's grip. There was more mass there than he would have expected and he wondered if that was part of the camouflage.

A snap-hiss noise announced that Shem had ignited Rhaga's lightsaber. He stared into the white light and in the dark room, it turned his face a few shades paler.

Rhaga turned on the lightsaber he was holding. The green blade thrummed gleefully, bringing into his mind the thrill with which Shem dived through the city's veins. There were other feelings in there too, deeper, more serious ones buzzing away beneath the surface. Like their owner, they slipped around any attempt to examine them closely.

He became aware that Shem was staring at him in some confusion.

“You turned it on first time.”

“Yes?” he agreed, not sure how to take this accusation.

“It’s not supposed to be that easy.”

Rhaga frowned and examined the sword again. Sure enough, his fingers were pressing a sequence of buttons down the length of the hilt. He could make out the lines of a multitude of similar buttons all along the cylinder. There was no indication at a glance as to which were the correct ones to press. Yet he had got it exactly right. “I suppose it just felt right.”

“That's a very Jedi thing to say. You must be genuine!”

Shem turned off Rhaga's saber and tossed in back to him. Rhaga did the same with his. “You knew I was from the start.”

“Not quite from the start,” Shem corrected, “I knew the Force was with you, sure. Not that you'd been trained. Honestly, at first I didn't know what to make of you. You definitely didn't know how to talk to anyone.”

“I spent the last six years on a wild planet with only my teacher for company.”

“That'll be why then. Your teacher send you here?”

“I think she wanted me to learn how to survive in a world with people again.”

“Well, if it helps, you're starting to look at people less like you expect to have to cook them for lunch now. Pretty drastic training method though.”

“Then what about you? Or are you not an apprentice too.”

Leaning back, Shem folded his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles. “Oh, I'm an apprentice all right. My parents taught me to begin with then packed me off to a master of my own. She's here too. Not in Salintam. On the planet. She wants to see how I cope without direct guidance for a while. Same idea I suppose but she checks in from time to time. Unless yours is very good at hiding, I'm assuming she hasn't been doing the same.”

Rhaga shook his head.

“Drastic. So you're just going to wait here until she comes back?”

“No. I'm going to work and learn and help people.”

“Heh. You're talking my language there. That's what we do, the people on the same path as me. We live in the real worlds, going from place to place, doing what we can to make things better. Not in the swinging lightsabers at pirates kind of way though.”

“Helping feed people, protecting them from thieves, carrying medical supplies . . .”

“Anything where a super-normal amount of endurance and the ability to really get to know people can make a difference. Sometimes we even help out stray herders who don't have a clue how to get a real job.”

“And . . . you go from planet to planet? Is that what you mean?”

“Yep. Oh, some of us will stay in one place for a long time, seeing jobs through. But we wander. We're wayfarers, sky-walkers. We go where the currents of the Force carry us.” He drew a circle in the air with his foot.

“That must be an interesting life,” Rhaga said after thinking about it for a moment or two.

“I'm finding it to be.” Shem smirked at him. “I'm definitely meeting interesting people.”

“Even if they look like they want to eat you for lunch?”

“On you, it's almost endearing.”

The conversation lapsed for a little while. Partly because Rhaga was not at all sure how to respond to being called 'almost endearing' and partly because he felt the need to weigh his next questions carefully. Perhaps predictably, Shem started talking again before he had the chance.

“So now we've finally properly introduced ourselves, how'd you like to train together? In our copious free time, I mean. I know this place. Quiet and out of the way. I'm supposed to be keeping up my exercises but it's sort of hard to practice lightsaber forms on your own.”

“You do use it to fight then.”

“I don't _not_ use it. All the time.” A faint flush of emotion rolled over Shem's mind. Surprisingly enough, it felt like embarrassment. “Let's just say that as much as I like finding a smarter way to do things, there may also be a small issue with my general confidence in waving around a laser sword. I'm making a wild guess that you might not have the same problems.”

“I still have a lot to learn.”

“My master says that we always have a lot to learn about everything. She also says that other people are one of the best ways to learn what we don't know.”

“That . . . can be taken several ways.”

“Can't everything? What do you say? Want to train with me?”

“I . . . would like that. Thank you. For all the help.”

“I'm a sky-walker. It's what we do.”


	17. Chapter 17

Shem's pick of training grounds turned out to be a half-built habitation block overlooking the river that oozed through the very bottom of Salintam. He was vague on why it had been abandoned – Rhaga formed the impression he did not actually know – but enthusiastic about the use it could be put to. There was a large empty space roughly in the middle of the building, one that had perhaps been intended to be a communal area. It was dry and fairly featureless and despite the lack of walls down one side, reasonably clear of the heavy river smell that permeated much of the surroundings. By way of explanation, Shem pointed to the odour-eating plants now long out-grown their neatly regimented beds.

He spread his arms wide, apparently inviting praise for his choice of training ground. Rhaga gave him a slightly bemused nod which he responded to by beaming and putting down the bag he had brought with him. Presumably because it offered a little more protection, he was wearing a dark long-sleeve tunic instead of his normal vest. Rhaga was wearing the same overalls he wore every day. They were practical enough and it was not as if he owned much else in the way of clothes.

“You all right starting with a few basic forms to warm up?” Shem asked, ligthtsaber already at hand.

When Rhaga nodded again, he flowed into a sequence of stances, blade sweeping through a multitude for different angles before returning to a guard position. After watching for a few moments, Rhaga began to copy him, one position after the next. He did not quite have Shem's grace though and some of the movements felt awkward. After a few repetitions, he was unable to keep from stumbling and nearly lost his balance.

“Frell, you're nearly as bad at this as I am!” his friend exclaimed.

“I'm sorry. I did not learn this way.”

“Really? That's . . . I guess I should be the one apologising then. I just assumed everyone got taught the basic forms. I'd ask if you wanted to keep copying me but I know I'm a bad example . . .” He rolled his shoulders. “Maybe you'd better show me how you trained then, otherwise this is going to be a waste of our time.”

“Are you sure?”

Shem's grin faulted, just for a second. “Uh – sure. You survived it and you're about half my size so how hard can it be?”

Rhaga double checked that his saber was on the lowest output setting, brought it up horizontal and went for him. Shem's shock reverberated up his arms with the first contact-flash. He parried with difficulty, just barely able to turn the white blade aside. They traded a couple more blows, feeling around each other's defences – well, Rhaga testing Shem's and Shem struggling to fend off the left-handed strikes. Bubbles of what felt a little like panic escaped the slippery surface of Shem's mind.

Then Rhaga sped up and it was definitely panic. All at once, the wayfarer was trying to stand his ground in the face of a dozen probing jabs, all light but coming so fast he was forced to weave around them rather than trying to block. He quickly got into a rhythm that allowed him to do just that, his greater flexibility making up for his lack of finesse with his blade. Rhaga immediately changed tactics, sweeping high, then low, saber singing through the air. Shem went off balance and he charged, driving his shoulder into the twi'lek's chest.

“So your teacher tried to kill you every time you trained?” Shem said a moment later, flat on his back with the point of Rhaga's sword hovering a handspan from the tip of his nose.

“Of course not. This isn't about aggression. It's about finding the quickest way to end the conflict.” Flicking his blade up again, Rhaga raised it in salute. “I don't think you're as bad at this as you think you are.”

“Really? My bruised backside begs to differ.”

“Perhaps this wasn't a good idea.” He reached down to help Shem up. “I'm sorry.”

“No, no you don't. You don't get off that lightly.” The green blade snapped back into life and into a guard position. “If that's how you train, that's how we'll train. My teacher's always telling me I need to see things through to the end.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely not! I foresee a truly phenomenal amount of pain in my near future. But I'm not going to be able to live with myself if I don't at least try to keep up with you. So come on! Let's get with the doing!”

Rhaga stepped back. “As you wish.”

The second go, he brought Shem down in half the time.

On the third, Shem caught him a glancing blow on the sleeve.

By the fourth, it was clear to Rhaga that Shem's greater reach and flexibility would place him at a great advantage if he ever managed to properly coordinate his movements.

That he still had a long way to go was demonstrated by how easily Rhaga flattened him on the fifth attempt.


	18. Chapter 18

“Is Lord Bartle really a lord?” Rhaga's question was muffled by the generator under which he was lying but he did not doubt that Shem could hear him. Loose components rattled around him as he groped for the flux regulator he had set aside some minutes before.

“Nah.” Shem's voice drifted down over the clink of metal. “It's a joke. 'Lord' is kind of what their first name sounds like in Basic. Also, you've met them. You can just picture them quaffing ale in a big old feasting hall, right?”

“Mm,” Rhaga agreed, teeth now clenched around a bolt as he set about fixing the regulator back into place.

“Is this going to take much longer?”

“For a Jedi, you are very impatient sometimes,” Rhaga said once he had removed the bolt from his mouth.

“Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm happy to stare at you fiddling with this thing all day. You know you get this furrow right between the eyes when you're really concentrating? But I'm just thinking about the clinic upstairs. When do they get back to full power?”

“Since this is the third time I've had to fix this unit, I think the question is more 'how long will it last when they do?' This shouldn't even still be in service.”

“They say a decent generator will last you a lifetime.”

“I'm not sure anyone lives as long as this has been going.”

Sliding himself out into the open, Rhaga stood up and checked the monitor he had wired into the generator's control panel. There was some improvement in the levels, though not quite enough that he wanted to risk turning the machine on. He exhaled gently and eased himself into the gap behind the back and the wall. Perhaps cleaning the fuel lines again would be a good next step.

Shem watched him from on top of the equipment cabinet in the corner. “So if you asked a personal question, can I?”

“How is asking about Bartle a personal question?”

“It's personal to him.”

“I suppose it is hard to argue with that.”

“Is the hilt of your lightsaber really made from bone? Because it looks like bone. And it feels like bone. Probably tastes like bone but I haven't –”

“It's bone.”

In the silence that followed, Rhaga unscrewed the overflow cap and started feeding in a thread-brush. He listened to Shem's breathing, noting the discomfort beneath it. But he said nothing more.

“I'm pretty sure it's against the Jedi Code not to tell me the story behind that.”

“You have a very strange view of the Jedi Code.”

“Stop teasing me, annoying hairy person, and tell me why your lightsaber has a bone handle. Whose bone was it?”

“A predator from the world I trained on. I don't know if anyone had given it a name. Feline. A big cat.”

“I know what feline means. What happened?”

The brush was coming out covered in gunk. That probably meant there was a reservoir of grime he had missed the first time around. “It tried to kill me. I killed it.”

“Unlucky cat.” Shem's fingers beat out a rhythm on the side of the cabinet. “You don't seem like the trophy-keeping type.”

“It's not a trophy.”

“Then what?

Rhaga reached around to open up another of the casing panels. “A promise.”

“To be infuriatingly cryptic at every opportunity?”

“To accept the consequences of using a weapon. And to accept that dying by the sword may be one of them.”

Shem stopped drumming. “Which answers another great mystery: why you never smile.”

He fell quiet for a while after that, for which Rhaga was slightly grateful. It allowed him to concentrate on the task of locating whatever had been dissolving in the generator's inner workings. For it to have washed down into the lower pipes, it would need to be closer to the tanks . . . perhaps in the intermixer. It took him a few minutes to get that opened up and as soon as he did, the waft of rusty air rose into his face. He was definitely looking in the right place. Now just to reach down and find whatever had gotten stuck in there.

A whisper of movement, half in his mind, told him that Shem had come up behind him. He ignored the presence and plunged his hand into the gunk, feeling about inside. His fingers brushed the edge of something that shifted against the wall of chamber just as Shem's fingers brushed the back of his neck.

“You're not just a sword.”

Rhaga fished around, trying to get a purchase on whatever he was reaching for. “I know.”

“Do you? I can sense your mind too. It worries me sometimes, what that feels like.”

“What is that?”

“I'm not sure how to describe it. Sometimes like a trap waiting to be sprung. Not closed, but . . . hardened. Cold.”

“I'm sorry.” It was coming out now, shifting back into his grip. “For making you uncomfortable.”

“That's not the problem.”

“You think my mind is a problem?”

“No. But I wonder about what your master taught you.”

“She was a Jedi. She taught me the ways of the Force, not of the Dark Side.”

“Rhaga, if you were in the Dark, I'd not be standing this close to you. But no one, not even a master, knows everything. Be careful you don't stop learning just because you've gotten used to one way of thinking.”

Rhaga's hand closed firmly around the object and he yanked it out. A block of corroded metal sat oozing in his palm, blackened and half turned to sludge. Bits of it crumbled away even as he watched.

“What the drek is that?” Shem asked, peering over his shoulder, attitude once more cocksure and easy.

“That is the intermix modulator. It's supposed to be governing the flow-rate and the combustion threshold.”

“You're never going to be able to fix that.”

“No,” Rhaga agreed, “I'm not.” He dropped it into the bucket of scrap he had been gradually filling with every successive attempt to get the generator running. “This actually explains a lot.”

“Such as why this thing breathes black smoke every time anyone turns it on?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have another one of those things?”

“No. I'll have to see if Kariz'lal knows where I can get a replacement.”

“I know some lovely scrapyards you could try.”

Pulling a rag from his pocket Rhaga began to wipe his hands so that they would be, if not clean, then at least a little less caked in grime. He contemplated the generator, running his mind through the maze of its inner workings and planning out exactly what he would have to do to replace the corroded modulator. Somewhat distractingly, the memory of Shem touching his neck was now mixed into his mental-map of the machine.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Shem asked in a tone of voice that went just the wrong side of careless.

But Rhaga did not answer.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Happy new year!  
> * It's Star Wars time again, so I've started up with this fic. New plot arc starts here!

With an exasperated stream of clicking and snapping, Kariz'lal's monitor droid rammed Rhaga in the small of the back, determined to get him up from the workbench and out into the open so he could deal with the customers who had just walked through the door. They had been in the shop all of ten seconds and the ball was clearly expecting them to have stolen everything that was not bolted down.

Even after a few months, it still did not seem to have realised that Rhaga could usually sense people coming long before it could and could get a fair idea of whether they meant ill without even seeing them. These two – he was fairly sure that it was two – were agitated, possibly in a hurry, but not in a way that made him worry for the valuables.

Studiously completing the addition of a transtater to the circuit he was working on, he called out over the droid's insistent chattering. “One moment, please.”

There was no reply. Even so, a flicker of emotion told him he had been heard. Irritation at the delay, he thought, and replaced the soldering torch in its cradle quickly.

Stepping out of the corner nook in which he did most of his more delicate work, Rhaga offered the customers an apologetic bow. “How may I help you?”

They were both human, or near enough, a man and a woman dressed identically in well-cut dark suits. Far too well-cut for that level of Salintam. Whoever they were, they were some way from home.

“We're looking for the droid engineer, Karizlal,” the man said without any preamble.

“I am afraid she is not working today. A . . . family engagement.” Rhaga hesitated to say so as he was not entirely sure of the dynamics of verpine culture or whether they organised themselves into anything remotely resembling families. But in the absence of Kariz'lal providing anything like a satisfactory explanation for disappearing for the day, it seemed to easiest approximation. “She will not be back until tomorrow night.”

The man swore. The woman asked, “There isn't any way to call her back here?”

“I am sorry. There isn't.”

The two of them exchanged equally questioning glances. The woman took a step towards Rhaga. “Are you Karizlal's assistant?”

“Apprentice,” he corrected. The second mispronunciation of Kariz'lal's name caused him a pang of irritation. There was something off-hand in how each of them said it. As though they were not bothering to try getting it right.

They swapped glances again.

“We have a bit of an emergency on our hands,” the man explained cautiously, “A droid whose memory we need access to right away. As a renowned mechanic, Karizlal would have been our first choice to fix the issue.” That seemed not exactly a lie yet it rang with untruth. “If she has been training you, I imagine you must be quite a skilled young man.”

The implied flattery would have been more convincing if not for the question behind it. “I am more capable at mechanical operations than software,” Rhaga told him, “I wouldn't be able to perform any complex recovery –”

“That's actually all right,” the woman interrupted, “The problems, um, more mechanical than software. Look, like my colleague said, this is a very pressing matter. Time sensitive. We'll pay you a triple rate if you come with us right now but it does have to be _now_.”

Their agitation was increasing with every passing word. Now they were closer, he could feel something akin to panic lurking beneath the surfaces of their minds.

“I'll come and take a look. But I can't be gone from here too long. And I will need to take a name for the records.” He moved around to the commerce console and brought up the customer registry, holding his hands ready to type and looking at the two of them expectantly.

“Eradu,” the woman said slowly, “Yin and Taymor Eradu.”

“And where is the droid? I need to enter that if I am going to leave the shop to look at it.”

“Lau-Siy Towers. Forty-fifth level.” The rest of the address was not offered and she seemed to almost be daring him to ask for more.

He dutifully entered what she had given him in the registry and signed the job as pending. “I'll need to collect my tool belt. Please wait here a moment.”

His belt was kept in the back of the workshop, hanging by the rear door, far enough away that any customer might think him out of earshot. Certainly the Eradus thought so because they began urgently whispering to one another as soon as he was out of their sight.

“So what's _his_ damage?” the man – Taymor, Rhaga assumed – hissed.

“Doesn't matter. As long as he can do the job.”

“ _Can he_? We came here for the verpine, not for the verpine's idiot apprentice.”

“He doesn't have to be perfect, just fast. And trust me, any human who can get a job working for a verpine is going to be quick.”

“Well I really hope you're right because if not –”

“Shhhh! He's coming back.”

Which he was, although he was intercepted by the monitor droid before he got anywhere near them. [K't'c?!] it squawked, clearly scandalised.

“Yes, I'm going out. I will lock up after me and you can watch the shop until I am back.”

[Kkkk'tt'k k'l'ctttt!]

“That is an exaggeration. And I'm sure I won't be long anyway.”

The ball bobbed erratically around his head, not mollified in the slightest but in no position to actually stop him. In a passable imitation of the verpine language, he asked it to move aside and it reluctantly did so.

“I'm ready,” Rhaga told the Eradus, hefting the belt he had slung over his shoulder like a bandoleer. It bristled with every manner of tool and nearly burst with pockets of small components. They looked astonished, as if he had come out wearing half the workshop on his back. He did not point out that if they wanted him to work fast without telling him what the problem was, then he was going to need all the help he could carry.

 

* * *

 

The Eradus' airspeeder cut sharply through the daily rush. Taymor was an acceptable pilot who appeared firm in his belief that other people would move out of the way if given sufficient motivation. After the third near miss, Rhaga began to wonder if there was any particular Jedi technique for surviving high-speed collisions.

Either Yin was used to Taymor's driving or she had exceptionally strong nerves because she kept up air of extreme boredom throughout the entire journey. She and Rhaga were crammed into the passenger seats in the back. Quite what that said about the relationship between the two, he was not sure. The Eradus did not look like siblings and they did not seem to act like spouses. He could not really sense much feeling beyond their shared agitation when they interacted with each other. As to what that meant . . . he would wait and see.

The Lau-Siy Towers were a vast entertainment complex in one of Salintam's mid-tier district, mainly specialising in simulations and other virtual diversions. Like much of the city's sky-line, they were awash with lights and holograms even in the pale afternoon. Crowds and speeders flocked around the many entrances, an endless stream of customers for the brightly-dressed touts. The atmosphere was giddy with anticipation and addiction.

Taymor guided them down on to a private landing platform about halfway up. From there, he led the way into the network of drab utility corridors that lurked behind Lau-Siy's exciting frontage. Rhaga stayed by Yin's side. She was slightly taller, with slightly longer legs but it was easy enough to match her pace. He was used to travelling with Shem, after all. “In here,” Taymor grunted after ten minutes or so, opening the door to a small side room.

It was obviously the right one because the floor was strewn with astromech parts. Rhaga stared at them, slightly shocked at how completely – and ineptly – the droid had been disassembled.

“So, this is it.” Yin ushered him closer. “As you can see . . . we have a problem when it comes to accessing the memory in this thing.”

Rhaga looked sidelong at her.

“Can you fix it?” Traymor demanded.

Crossing over the gaping ruin of the droid's dome, Rhaga crouched down and peered inside. “I don't know.”

“That's a lot of use! I need to know –!”

Yin silenced him with a glare. “ _We_ would like to get some idea of how long you think this might take.”

“Yes. But I can't tell you. I will work as fast as I can but . . .” Rhaga shrugged, lopsided thanks to the tool belt.

“Well please let us know when you have an idea. Here.” She handed him a commlink. “We need to take care of a few things while you get on with it. If you need anything, just call.”

He nodded, sitting cross-legged to begin sorting through the tangle of components trailing from the dome.

The Eradus did not leave immediately. He could feel their eyes on him as he picked up the astromech's behaviour core and it clinked ominously in his hands. Could feel too the uncertainty and confusion with which they were regarding him. They were wondering if they had made a terrible mistake. “We'll just leave you to it then,” Yin said eventually, not quite so self-assured any more.

The door swished shut and Rhaga was alone with the echo of the Eradus' fear.


	20. Chapter 20

An hour's solid work and R22-Q5 was slightly less of a complete wreck.

He had found the droid's identification tag lying under a right-hand tread, discarded during the desperate attempt to get at the memory core. Judging by the scoring across the dull green casing panels, the initial damage had been done by a close proximity ion blast that, luckily for R22, had then been absorbed by several layers of shielding. _Unfortunately_ for R22, that shielding had been poorly maintained and it only softened the blast, saving the central processors from melting but not stopping several important relays and half the power grid burning out.

And then someone had attempted to effect repairs by undoing every bolt and fastening they could find before trying to put the parts all back together again in no obviously sane order. Their blundering had probably done more damage than the initial attack.

It was not the first such case Rhaga had seen. Occasionally, one gang member or another would come sheepishly to the shop with a probe droid mangled in a street fight or a training unit they had tried to 'enhance'. Every so often, Kariz'lal even agreed to fix their mistakes, though never without giving them a verbal lashing for allowing innocent mechanicals to bear the brunt of their stupidity.

Who, Rhaga wondered, would have been on the receiving end of one evoked by the state of R22? Had one of the Eradus tried their hand at amateur repairs? Or was he looking at the work of their last hired mechanic? If so, they had been sold rotten feed. The first theory seemed more likely. Whatever was in the astromech's memory, they wanted it badly.

If Rhaga had been in any way a decent slicer, he could have simply linked the isolated core into an external drive. As it was, however, the module was locked up tight and his only option was to reinstall it and hope that R22 was feeling cooperative. Which of course meant rebuilding at least enough of the droid to be able to do that and given how tightly intermeshed astromech systems tended to be, 'enough' meant 'nearly all'. That was no bad thing. Rhaga was entirely uncomfortable with the idea of leaving R22 half-wrecked. This way he would be able justify the restoration as part of the job he was being paid for. As long as he kept up the pace, he did not expect the Eradus would quibble.

He would have expected them to keep putting their heads around the door to check on his progress, given the emotions he read from them. Yet they appeared content to leave him to work in peace. That was good in many ways. It also raised more questions.

The segments of R22's collar motivator slotted together in Rhaga's hands while his mind retraced everything he had seen and heard since the Eradus had entered Kariz'lal's shop. It was simple to detach the two processes. Rather like meditating. And just like meditating it left him open to the Force and the ripples, big and small, caused by all the lives in the tower. Hazy impressions washed over him, all the moments and feelings people cast heedlessly out into the universe without a care for the shores on which they broke. He did not pay them much attention, simply let them settle within him as part of his sense of the here and now. There was a world around him and he was of that world. Any divisions were insubstantial tricks of thought.

Which was why he was not remotely startled when a girl fell out of the ventilation system.

Her arrival was preceded by the truncated groan of over-stressed bolts that announced the grating beneath her was giving way. She yelped as she tumbled after it, the noise ending in a hard landing and a gasp of pain. Thankfully, the ventilator was at the edge of room so she was spared the added agony of landing on a bit of R22.

Rhaga got up and walked slowly over to her. The room was not very tall and the ventilation chutes were built into the inward bend between wall and ceiling, so the fall was not likely to be life-threatening. From the moaning, he supposed it must have still hurt quite a bit. The girl was on her hands and knees, so most of what he could see of her was a head of tightly-curling, closely cropped brown hair and the back of a battered, possibly third-hand spacer's jacket.

He crouched down in front of her, adopting more or less the same stance he had been using to examine R22. “The grills are usually bolted only so much that they hold their own weight. For easy maintenance access. You would have been better to have kept your weight inside the chute.”

“Thanks.” The girl rocked back, grimacing and rubbing at her hands. “I'll take a note for next time. Of course if you'd sat so that I could see you properly from in there, I wouldn't have had to lean on the grill at all.”

“I am sorry. I'll note that for next time too.”

She snorted and studied him for a moment. “Funny guy. I'm Jak Eradu.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“You say that like you don't know what it means.”

“So I've been told.” Since she was not seriously injured, he turned around and went back to working on R22.

“Hey!” Jak protested, “It's polite to give your name when someone gives you theirs!”

“What about spying on them from a ventilator?

“Yeah, well. No one would let me come down here. Had to do something.”

Rhaga chose not to make any reply and slotted in the final few pieces to complete the neck joint. A couple of spot seals and he was ready to put the dome back on.

“How's it going?” Jak came up behind him to peer curiously into the droid's inner workings. “That's some pretty bad scorching.”

“If the ion blast had been any closer, R22 would have been killed outright.”

“Killed?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, that's just a funny way of putting it. It's a droid.”

“Which can mean a fully sentient independent being. You would not say I had just 'deactivated' you if I burned out your nervous system.”

“Well no but . . . you had its brain in bits all over the floor a few minutes ago.”

“I could spread your brain in bits all over the floor. You'd just be harder to put back together.”

She shot him a sideways look. “I can't actually tell if you're threatening me or not.”

“No,” he agreed, hefting the dome up and setting it in place.

“You are either complete psycho crazy or the dullest person I've ever met. Wait, did you say ion blast?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

Rhaga tilted his head. “Didn't your parents tell you?”

“My . . . you mean Yin and Tay? Stars, they're not my parents!”

Going by their appearance, Rhaga did not for a moment think they were but it seemed the quickest way to provoke an informative response. “But you are all called Eradu. Are you cousins?”

“We're _Eradus_ ,” she said as if he was extremely ignorant not to know the significance, “Ward kids. _Orphans_. Eradu is the name we were given,”

“I see. Thank you for explaining. I am not from this city.”

“No kidding. Or did you think I thought you'd gotten hair like that from a really bad shock?”

“Either way, you did not know about the shock this droid received.”

“Yeah, _obviously_. Don't be surprised. Yin and Tay never tell me anything.” She sniffed loudly. “But yeah, ion blast? Seriously? I thought Tay had just broken it trying to get the data out.”

“I imagine that did not help. Assuming he was the one who dismantled R22's casing.”

“That was him. Thinks he can do anything. Doesn't know one end of a hydro-spanner from the other.”

Dropping to the floor next to him, Jak ran her fingers over the blackened panels and frowned. Rhaga's sense of her took on a tinge of suspicion and . . . disappointment. “They didn't tell me it was attacked.”

He considered pointing out that this made sense if they never told her anything. The way she spoke decided him against it. Instead he folded a few cables back into cavities within the dome and started reattaching the exterior hatches.

Jak watched him in silence for a few minutes, fidgeting a little. “You _are_ going to be able to fix it up, then?”

“I think so, yes. And the memory hasn't been damaged. Now I've replaced or bypassed the damaged components, the data R22's carrying will be accessible. By the way, do you know if R22 used a gender?”

“How would I know? I never saw it active. It was already in pieces first I knew about it. Is it important? The gender?”

“Not to you, clearly.”

“OK, I get it, you're one of those droids-are-people nuts and I'm a terrible person! Sheeesh.”

“I do not know you well enough to say if you are a terrible person or not. Do you know where this droid came from?”

“I . . . uh. No.”

“Because no one tells you anything?”

“Something like that. Look, you're just here to fix it. You don't need to know anything more than what's wrong with it. Right?”

“Correct.”

“OK then.”

Screwing in the main photoreceptor was the last job. Rhaga picked it up in the cloth on which he had laid it when he started working and gently slid it into place. He gave the lens a vigorous polish, then started gathering his tools back together.

“It's done?” Jak asked.

“Structurally. There still might be problems when I restore the power.”

“Are we talking software glitches or the top blowing off? Just so I know how far I should be standing back.”

“You could always stand outside the room.”

“Nice. I think you're trying to get rid of me.”

“Will I?”

“Not a chance. I want to see what happens.”

“Hopefully not that top blowing off,” Rhaga murmured and flicked the override on R22's batteries.

A short, sharp whine of energy rose through the droid's stocky body. The readout panels on the dome flickered wildly with contradictory outputs then dimmed into something approaching a normal stream of data. Giving a long moan, R22 rocked slowly back on its treads. Its head swivelled from side to side, photoreceptors rotating in their sockets.

“Hello?” Rhaga dropped to his knee. “Can you hear me?”

R22 moaned again then warbled drowsily.

“How do you feel? How are your levels?”

The droid considered. “Doo-wheet.”

“That's good. Any residual cross-circuiting you can detect?”

“Doooooo.”

“All right. I am going to lock in the current settings. Let me know if anything starts to feel wrong. There. How about your motivators?”

R22 extended its third tread and slid forward a few hand-spans. It turned in place with a squeal of stressed machinery. “Bllltt.”

“There was only so much I could do. You really need new bearings on all of them. Is it enough for you to get about for now?”

“Blp-doot-vvvvvvzz!”

“That's good.”

“OK, enough with the bedside manner!” Jak was practically jumping up and down. “What about its memory?”

Rhaga looked from her to R22. The droid bipped uncertainly. “There are people who want the data you were carrying rather badly,” he explained, “How are your memory banks functioning?”

“Dooooooooooot.”

“Is that good?” Jak demanded.

“It's not bad. Do you remember who attacked y –”

Eyes widening, Rhaga shot upright and spun around He had just enough time to rip his lightsaber from his belt before the door burst open and a man came in carrying a gun.


End file.
